Gulf | Oman
Oman eyes linking two ancient sites frequented by tourists
Authorities in Oman are considering connecting two archaeological sites in Qurum district of Muscat to make it easier for tourists to visit both sites.
- By Sunil K. Vaidya, Bureau Chief
- Published: 21:12 March 2, 2008
Muscat: Authorities in Oman are considering connecting two archaeological sites in Qurum district of Muscat to make it easier for tourists to visit both sites.
"We have one site within the boundary walls of Qurum Nature Park and one in Ras Al Hamraa and we are considering connecting these two sites so visitors can directly go from one site to the other," Byubwa Bint Ali Al Sabri, Director of Excavations and Archaeological Research, told Gulf News on Sunday.
She added that the Ras Al Hamraa site (No 5) was rich in archaeological finds and since resumption of excavation last January, it has yielded good results. "We have found more burial sites," she confirmed.
Al Sabri also revealed that the ministry was thinking of building a museum at this site and also convert the excavation site to an archaeological park.
"It is in the planning stages now but we are certain to create a museum to house bones found in cairns, hundreds of which are discovered in Oman," she said.
She also confirmed that Oman's vast heritage of ancient burial cairns - mounds of stones erected as a memorial or landmark - could potentially find a place on Unesco's coveted World Heritage List.
These ancient cairns dating back to the Bronze Age (3000-2000 BC), are featured in a new book In the Shadow of the Ancestor: The Prehistoric Foundations of The Early Arabian, authored jointly by Serge Cleuziou and Professor Maurizio Tosi. The book was officially released on Saturday at the Ministry of Heritage and Culture.
According to Prof Tosi the burial cairns hold the answer to the secret of assabiya (tribal alliances), a process that held ancient Arabian communities together in peace and prosperity, although such communities lacked the complexities surrounding the great civilisations of the time in Mesopotamia, Egypt and India.
"Large burial mounds like the ones found in Bat, site of ancient Magan civilisation of the 3rd millennium BC, are one of the most reliable parameters used by archaeologists to irrefutably establish the fact that a civilisation had crystalised and assumed a very definite identity," Prof Tosi said during the book launch.
"We see the Omanis of the Magan civilisation defining assabiya by burying people in stone cairns, which we now see all over Oman," he added. And, in his learned opinion these are collective burials.
The renowned archaeologist, who along with fellow colleagues from Italian and French universities has been involved in the archaeological study in Oman for over three decades, believes that Oman is home to some 100,000 cairns.
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